Distorted audio on 6600

Jim Osterling

I see the audio thread discussing the 6400 has been closed as solved. I'm not sure if I have the same problem or not.

I've had the 6600 for a month or so and generally, am really enjoying the radio. So far, the only fly in the ointment is a scratchy, static sound on the peaks of ssb signals and fairly constant on a good cw signal. 

I don't use any noise blankers. I turned of all noise reduction and played with the bandpass widths. None of these efforts helped. I hadn't noticed this when I first started operating the radio but may have been so busy learning the radio, I wasn't paying attention.....   Also, the radio is turned off when not in use so gets rebooted daily.

Last night, instead of shutting down the radio and doing something else when I got weary of hearing it, I restarted Ssdr and that seemed to largely eliminate the problem. Of course, this is a data set of one but I'll being seeing how this goes over the next few days and report back. 

Fingers crossed.

Jim

Jim Gilliam

Did you have all green bars on your latentcy ? Sometimes if my network gets busy I notice a degradation in the audio quality and I have red on the latency indicator.

Jim, K6QE

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Jim

Can you tell us more on your setup?  How are you listening to the radio?  Is it a LAN connection or is there any WiFi involved for the data to get to the user from the radio.

What you describe sounds like network packet loss, and this tends to happen on WiFi connections.

How are you tuning your AGC-T?

Mike

Jim Gilliam

Did you have all green bars on your latentcy ? Sometimes if my network gets busy I notice a degradation in the audio quality and I have red on the latency indicator.

Jim, K6QE

Mark WS7M

Jim, are you using PC Audio or do you have audio going to speakers or headphones direct out of the 6600?

Jim Osterling

Thanks for the replies.

Last night before the reboot of Ssdr, I had turned agc t all the way up. Different amounts of this setting had no affect on the problem. Normally, when I start operating, I'll set the slice in the static and bring the agc t down until I start to hear an effect of less noise. Then will add some NR for weaker signal work (2-5 or so) but turn NR off on strong signals.

My bars are full, solid green. I'll check the network status pop up next time but had stopped using it as it was always good. I have the 6600 cabled to a wifi repeater so only the laptop and the radio are on this subnet. The repeater is well with in range of the Comcrap gear and am running 6gig band.

Basically, had everything turned off last night when working with this. I don't use preamps or WNB, I'll use some rx equalization when signal is close to the noise floor but this was off last night, NR off and agc t set to max (right) so no effect. The laptop is a Dell i7, 16 gig ram and good vid card, standard sound.

Jim

Jim Osterling

Using PC audio to a Logitech gaming headset. Sound is good, audio reports have been good.

Jim

Mark WS7M

Hi Jim,

Ok just to rule some things out...

Next time your audio gets scratchy can you go and plug in headphones right into the headphones output on the back of the radio and see how it sounds there?

I have a 6600 and I've never had scratchy incoming audio EXCEPT when a station totally overloaded my front end or if the network bars get down to red.

Mark

Tim - W4TME

This is a good suggestion.  Take the PC/Windows AUdio out of the equation and connect speakers or headphones directly to the radio.

Jim Osterling

I did as suggested and the scratchiness/static is evident in the headphones straight from the radio..... was hoping it would be a patch or something, setting etc for Ssdr.

Tim - what now?

Thanks for your help.

Jim

Tim - W4TME

The best course of action at this point is for me to convert your Community post into a HelpDesk support ticket so we can do additional in-depth analysis of the issue.

Jim Osterling

Sounds good. I was going to look into doing a "factory reset". I thought I saw something about that in the manual or on the forums. Would that be recommended or would it be better to wait in case some diagnostics need to be run to help identify the problem first?

Jim

Jim Osterling

Tim has been very good at working with me and the Flex engineering department on this problem but were unable to determine what the cause is.

I'm using a logitech wireless headset on a laptop. Still not sure what the specific issue is but have found a way to eliminate the problem. Perhaps this will help someone else down the road.

When I boot the laptop or wake it up, I'll start Ssdr, Frstacks and my logging program. I'll listen to a few seconds of sound on the laptop speakers with pc selected as input. I then plug in the wireless dongle and the sound stays clean.

For some reason, if the headset dongle is already plugged in when I start Ssdr, I'll get the static/scratchy sounds 90 + percent of the time.

73
Jim

Steven WA8Y

I get this occasionally and I suspected my A/D has lost its heat sink.   But I have yet to open the 6600 to see. My Flex never gets hot b/c I drive mine amp with 15 watts. I have the PEN, all I need is a Round-to-it and and a Torx 14 to have a look inside.

Steven WA8Y

I get this occasionally but I am always hardwired to headphones on a wi-fi Maestro or power speakers plugged into the 6600.

Mike-VA3MW

The ADC gets hot without transmitting.  It gets hot with receiving.  You'll need a #8 Torx.  The fix should have come with the Torx driver.

Mike

Neal Pollack, N6YFM

My apologies if I missed this, or if you already mentioned it;  But you said you used the logitech headphones direct into the Flex rig and also via PC Audio.   Have you tried a different set of other model headphones, both with PC Audio and with direct connection to the rig, to rule out the possibility that the headphones themselves are starting to fail?

Jim Osterling

Logitech headphones are through the laptop only, over the lan to the flex. I also use the headphones for other purposes and they work fine. Now that I now the "proper" start up sequence, they work fine with the radio. 

Tim did mention, in the email closing the help ticket, that the logitech dongle may be interfering with the opus codec used by flex to transfer audio over the lan. For whatever reason, by letting the flex software get established in it's connection first, then plugging in dongle,  the interference doesn't occur and all is good. 

As it turns out, since the logitech is a gaming headset, the parameters needed to be good at that also make it good as a radio headset (good audio and a decent quality mic that doesn't pic up room sounds etc). The audio I hear is excellent and on several occasions, I've gotten good reports from the other end of the qso...... since I already have the headset (and since it was a gift from my wife), having it work out for the radio hobby is a bonus.

Jim

Rick- K2RB

Hi Jim

Trying to decipher whether your situation was similar to mine which has been completely solved by the flex team.   If your situation was like mine you can do a simple test.  Go into settings and hit radio settings.  Hit RX and under 10MHZ Reference change the setting from auto to external 10 mhz.  Then check to see if your audio improves.  If not than your issue is different.  Let the help desk know if it good audio under the external setting.  If no change go back to auto.  Rick

WX7Y

Paul G4AFU

I get the same scratchiness on my 6600/Maestro, (4 weeks old) with ethernet link local. No amount of playing with the audio settings/noise mitigation gets rid of it. Only happens with headphones ( Radiosport RS20S). The speaker output on the Maestro is superb with no scratchiness. Have tried changing the 10Mhz reference from TXCO locked to external but makes no difference. Should I ask for a Help Ticket or leave it with Tim and Jim Osterling?

WX7Y

I have a external 10MHz GPS for both radios so yes it is clicked on for external but that gives me something to check for sure.
I can try it out and see what difference it makes

Thanks so much for your input. Update: It was on automatic and switching it to the external source initial reports are saying it sounds a bit better Thanks again Bret Wx7y
Bret
WX7Y